The Divine Tragedy
by Riemann
Summary: Sam and Dean face a seemingly immortal battalion of back-from-the-dead monsters. But as they dig deeper, they find themselves facing an enemy far more powerful than anything they've ever faced. And an army of the undead is just the beginning of what is in store for the brothers and Castiel.
1. Chapter 1: Highway to Hell

_Chapter 1: Highway to Hell_

* * *

It was quarter past midnight in Detroit, Michigan and Sam had just dozed off beside Dean in his beloved 1967 Chevrolet Impala. Sam found it a little easier to depart to Dreamland partly because the overwhelming sound of the roaring of the Impala's engine was absent, and partly because they had decapitated a whole nest-full of ghouls minutes ago.

The silence was deafening and Sam was drifting in limbo. Out of nowhere, an earsplitting sound of _Highway to Hell_ broke his sub-conscious flow and he was back in the car, his brother pointing a flashlight directly at his eyes.

"Wakey wakey, little brother!" Dean yelled over the noise.

Sam, with his eyes half-opened, said groggily, "What the hell are you doing?"

Pointing his flashlight back to the newspaper he had in front of him, he replied, "What the hell does it look like I'm doing?"

"Looking for a case?"

"Yathzee!" Dean said, not taking his eyes off the newspaper.

"Come on! Can't we have the night off? We just ganked a bunch of ghouls," he said, closing his eyes.

"How about this for a job?" Dean said excitedly, ignoring Sam's words. "'Local found dead in his house, his body turned _inside-out_ '!"

Dean gave his signature smile. "Sounds like the real deal to me."

"How's that even possible?" Sam said with a contorted look on his face.

"One way to find out."

He threw the newspaper in the back-seat and revved the engine of the car. "It's not even that far. Just fifteen states over."

" _Fifteen?"_

"What? You wanna hear fifty?"

"I don't care how many states over you take me," Sam said sleepily. "I need my four hours' sleep."

Dean shrugged. Just when he was about to throw the flashlight at the back too, it flickered for a second or two and the radio in the car went berserk. Dean turned the radio off and slowly pulled out his gun as he exchanged a soulful look with Sam. They both knew what that meant – a ghost. Sam took his gun out too and his sleepy mood flew out of the window.

They looked around for the ghost but there was complete silence for what seemed like forever. All of a sudden, Sam saw a figure appear behind Dean which, he was pretty sure, was the ghost.

"Dean, get down!" Sam shouted.

Not wasting a moment, Dean ducked down and in a synchronized motion Sam pulled the trigger. The figure vaporized immediately after getting hit by the bullet. It didn't mean the ghost had died. It meant that it was all the more pissed off.

"What the hell is going on in this town?" Dean said, his eyes wide open.

"Beats me!"

"I thought it was ghoul case! We killed the ghouls!"

"Maybe it's their ghost?" Sam said uncertainly.

"Ghoul-ghost? Now that just sounds stupid." Dean said, eyeing the concrete jungle of Detroit before them. His body filled with horror as he realized what was going on half a block away. He nudged Sam on the ribs, who was looking behind the car for the ghost, and pointed directly ahead of them, his eyes dead-set.

"What the…?"

It was the gang of ghouls they had killed minutes ago. "How did they-" Sam was interrupted by a thunderous noise from above. It was as if something was jumping up and down as hard as they could on the car's roof. The shock of seeing the ghost and the ghouls had yet to settle in, and they were nowhere ready to face what was up on the roof.

"Dean! Drive…fast!" Sam yelled over the noise.

Dean stepped on the gas pedal and the car hurtled through the black-pitch running over some ghouls on its way.

"Faster! The ghouls are following us."

"I'm driving as fast as I can!" Dean shouted angrily.

The good news was that ghouls were extremely slow runners. The bad news was that ghouls were the least of their worries at the moment. Whatever was on the roof of the car was still there, jumping its ass off. Dean made a sharp turn and at that moment whatever it was, fell off the roof and the car ran over it.

"What was that?"

"Don't know, don't care," Dean said, focusing intently on the road ahead.

Another jolt of surprise hit them as they saw another figure on the road, another ghoul possibly, with its arms wide open, trying to block them.

"Alright, hang on Sammy," Dean said, speeding up the vehicle, his eyes flashing with grueling determination.

Just before the car hit the figure, they got a brief glimpse of it. As brief as it was, they were dead sure of what they had just seen. And it wasn't a ghoul.

"Was that a-"

"Vampire?" Sam stole the words out of Dean's mouth as they shared another scared-to-death-look.

"I reiterate…what the hell is going on in this town?"

Just after he said that, a shtriga appeared on the road.

"Oh, come on! Another monster? Is every single son a bitch we've ever hunted going to pay us a visit tonight?"

"Just keep going, Dean!" Sam said in a panicky voice.

"Does it look like I'm stopping?"

Shtrigas, another kind of monsters, aren't that strong a creature, so it wasn't difficult for the '67 Impala to knock it over. But it was a hell of a lot faster than most creatures. "It's following us, Dean," Sam said, looking back. "Step on it!"

"Screw the Shtriga! Is that a werewolf?"

It didn't take much time for Sam to realize that about two hundred meters ahead of them was a fully transformed werewolf.

"Even the lunar cycle isn't right!"

"Gee, Sammy, you think?" Dean said, hoping for a little more than that. "We won't be able to knock that bastard down. It's too strong. What do we do?"

It was only about a hundred meters away now, and it was getting closer by the moment. They had to think quickly. Then it hit him. "We injure it," Sam said after a moment's thought. "We shoot it. Where are the silver bullets?"

One dose of silver would either temporarily paralyze or kill the werewolf, and many other monsters, depending on the part of its body where the silver hit them. _Genius,_ Dean thought, pulling his pistol out of his pocket.

"Here," Dean said as he passed Sam the pistol.

"Alright. You keep driving, I'll shoot it, and you run it over."

Dean nodded. He speeded up the car while Sam stuck half his body out of the car and aimed at the werewolf. He knew that his timing had to be exact, that he and Dean would have to, in a sense, have telepathic connection. If he were to shoot too late, they would crash right into the werewolf, and if he were to shoot too early, the werewolf would have enough time to recover from the wound, at least temporarily. The werewolf was getting closer much faster than Sam had expected probably because the werewolf was rampaging towards them too. Sam would have to rely entirely on his instincts. He'd had this sort of practice for years, thanks to his father who raised them like warriors; and more often than not, he'd wished for a different life, a normal apple-pie life, with a girlfriend, college, children, grand-children…

 _Little bit closer,_ a voice in his head said, shoving him back to reality. _Little bit more…closer…closer…now!_ Said the voice just before the car hit it, and he pulled the trigger just at the right moment. _Yes!_ Sam told himself. The bullet hit the creature on its left thigh and it splintered for a moment.

That was all they needed, the werewolf injured for just a moment; dead would have been better but injured was just as good. Then it was simply a matter of ramming it with the vehicle.

They breathed a sigh of relief after they passed the werewolf. Meanwhile, the shtriga, the vampire and somehow the "slow-running ghouls" were still following them. And they seemed to be a lot faster than the last ones they'd seen.

"They're still on our asses, Dean."

"Shoot them!" Dean said, not taking his eyes off the road, just in case something else appeared to stop them again.

Dean kept driving while Sam turned around, aimed at the vampire and shot it. The bullet hit it right on its head and it fell flat on the ground. He shot down the ghouls one by one and the only monster still left standing was the shtriga. Shtrigas were normally immune to silver, but since he had no other option, he shot it. As expected, the bullet didn't affect it. It was still running towards them, a lot faster than the four-decade-old car.

After that, something happened that churned Sam's stomach to pieces. The ghouls and the vampire that Sam had just shot got back up and they started running towards them.

"Dean, they won't die," Sam bellowed, with a scared look on his face.

"We've got bigger things to worry about right now," Dean pointed straight ahead.

And indeed it was big. It was a chupacabra…and a huge one; or maybe not a chupacabra at all; it was too huge to be one! It was the size of a medium-sized building! _What the hell is that?_ Dean thought to himself.

"Silver hurts chupacabras, right?" Sam asked.

"It should," Dean replied. "But we're living in a world where ghouls can _run_ and are immune to silver…so I don't know…"

"Good enough for me." Again, he stuck half his body out of the car and this time without wasting any time at all, he started shooting it because he wasn't even hundred percent sure that it was a chupacabra. They hadn't ever seen one this big.

And their worst fear came true. The silver didn't affect the creature at all. Normally, even a touch of silver would burn its flesh but now it was almost like it was wearing a 'silver-proof jacket…made of chupacabra skin.'

They had no choice but to stop the car. If they were to hit the thing, the car would get totaled and they would have an uninjured but a seriously pissed off giant-chupacabra on their tails.

"What do we do? What do we do?"

"I don't know!" Dean said incredulously.

"The ghouls, the vamp and the shtriga…." Sam turned around, and his face showed utter terror.

"What?" Dean turned back too.

It wasn't only a gang of ghouls, a vampire and a shtriga anymore. It was a gang of ghouls, vampires (plural!), shtrigas (plural!), wendigos, the werewolf fully recovered from the silver bullet ( _Since when does that happen?_ Dean asked himself), changelings, Daevas, and as far as they could tell, the entire monster army on Earth, only stronger because their weaknesses weren't what they used to be. It was as if every single monster that existed had gathered at Michigan specifically to kill them.

There was no way out. A chupacabra-giant blocking their way ahead and another army blocking their way behind them, they were locked inside an Iron Maiden clad in monsters instead of steel.

"What's the plan?"

"If we go down, we go down swinging! That's the plan," Dean said, reloading his gun, his eyes reflecting fear but alacrity at the same time.

He was right. There was no other choice. They both knew their end of the job. They looked at each other, took a deep breath and Sam reloaded his gun.

"You take the big thing, I'll take the army," he said.

Dean nodded. And a second later, they were out of the Impala, a garrison of angry monsters on one side, and a pissed-off gigantic monster they'd never seen on the other. Finally, the brothers were out in the open, their guns blazing, and the resonating sound of _Highway to Hell_ still in their heads knowing that they may well be on _their_ highway to hell….


	2. Chapter 2: A Battle with the Undead

_Chapter 2: A Battle With The_ _Undead_

* * *

They were out of the car in a flash, and as soon as they got out, they started shooting anything that moved. But it was like shooting zombies. The bullets literally had no effect on _any_ monster. Dean took on the chupacabra-giant and Sam took on the faction of monsters. The crowd was pretty far away from Sam so he had time to flip open the trunk of the car and grab anything more dangerous than a 9 millimeter. He took two sawn-off shotguns off the trunk with a bunch of its bullets.

"Dean!" he called out to his brother who was busy shooting the giant. It looked like a squirrel shooting dry peas with a peashooter at a human. Dean looked back and Sam passed him the shotgun and a few of its bullets. Dean dodged a punt from the chupacabra-giant and that gave him enough time to load the shotgun. He cocked it and shot right at its face as soon as he got the chance. It gave a wail of pain so loud that the ground seemed to vibrate from within.

Dean reloaded the shotgun as he dodged another fatal kick. The chupacabra-giant was moving so violently that Dean could no longer target at its face, so he did the next best thing he could. He shot at it randomly.

Sam, on the other hand, was occupied too with a whole army of monster tearing-ass towards him. "Come get me, bastards," he muttered and started shooting randomly at every creature with the sawn-off. Every monster he hit fell straight down to the ground due to the impact of the bullet, but about ten seconds later, got back up and started charging towards him again. He knew he wouldn't survive this riot for long but he didn't have any other choice. It was either run and die, or fight and die, and frankly if they fought and die, they'd at least die with some dignity. So he was intent on shooting down as many as he could before they could get too close to him.

On the other side, Dean was being manhandled by the chupacabra-giant. It had picked him off the ground and was now tossing him around playfully. Dean hadn't let go of his shotgun yet but he might as well have. It didn't hurt the chupacabra-giant as long as he didn't shoot in his face and there was no way Dean could aim at anything, let alone the face, considering he had trouble even holding on to the piece of wood that gave him a small amount of reassurance that he had a "weapon" on him.

It shouted something in a voice that was as harsh as it was incomprehensible, holding him by the back of his neck.

"Screw you!" Dean yelled at the top of his lungs.

The chupacabra-giant sighed. "Humans…such arrogant amoebas!"

"Bite me!"

"Okay," it said indifferently and tossed Dean right into its mouth.

"NO!" Dean shouted and a second later he was inside the chupacabra-giant's mouth. He felt fear of scale he hadn't known existed. Literally being broken down into pieces by _teeth_ awoke a rush of terror in him like never before. The entire world was violently shaking. Not knowing what to do, and barely even in control of his own body, he did the only thing that he could. He pulled the trigger of his shotgun. There was a deafening bang of the bullet being shot, and then everything went still.

Dean froze too because he didn't know what to think or expect. He didn't dare move because one wrong motion could cost him his life. All he could do was hope. Hope that he would survive this death-defying feat because he, more than anyone, knew that he could end up dead in the next few seconds. But everything was still motionless. _Maybe it's dead,_ he thought, with a hint of triumph building up inside him.

Oh, how wrong he was. The next thing he knew, he was flying out of its mouth, soaked in its saliva. As it turned out, it wasn't dead, but the inside of its mouth wasn't as bullet-proof as its body.

Everything after that happened in slow motion. Time seemed to stretch to an extraordinary extent. He had enough time to stare at the ugly face that had just spat him out smeared in red. He had enough time to feel triumphant that he had just hurt the giant, even though he was in free fall. He had enough time to turn his head to look at his brother struggling to survive an army of hell, and he had enough time to hear Sam yell "Rock s-", after that he could hear nothing, and frankly that was the least of his worries, and he had enough time to realize that he might die in a few milliseconds because he might as well have just fallen out of the topmost window of a _building_. He had enough time to wait for the fall to come and actually get scared and finally, he fell on the ground with a sickening thud and instantly passed out.

Sam, however, was alive as ever and was shooting away every monster within range. He'd never fought an army of monsters this big. The closest he'd been to this situation was when there were mere five Daevas in a building compared to now's more than twenty bullet-proof creatures. And he hadn't even been fighting solo then. His brother and his father had been beside him in the battle which had offered him some amount of consolation.

Every bullet he shot bought him enough time reload another one and shoot again. They were still pretty far away, though closing in quickly, so he had enough time to fumble as quickly as possible for different kinds of bullets and experiment to find out which one did the most damage.

Silver was as good as a punch in the gut. Good old iron did nothing more than make them stumble. Anything else did practically no harm at all. _Come on, come on, they're getting closer._

Desperation was setting in and it was really causing him to panic. The only type of bullets left in the spacious trunk of the Impala was rock-salt-bullets. _Oh, what the hell!_ Sam thought and loaded the shotgun with a couple of them. _Please work,_ he thought anxiously and shot one right through a vampire's eye.

He was hoping against hope for it to slow down, or better yet, kill the vampire and the result was unbelievable. It gave a howl of pain, covered its face with its hands, fell flat on his face and writhed on the ground. Smoke rose from its eyes as it twisted painfully on the pitched road. He had not the slightest clue to what was wrong with vampire, why rock-salt worked on it but not silver, since silver was supposed to have that very effect on it, but he was too preoccupied to care.

So without wasting another second, Sam pulled out a few rock salts from the back of the car, loaded his shotgun with them and began shooting wildly at everything. They were probably just a few hundred meters away from him. That bought him plenty of time to bring down quite a few of them.

"Dean," he shouted, without turning back, still shooting and hitting a few of them. "Rock-salt works on them, take a few from the trunk."

When Dean didn't say anything for a long while, he stole a moment to check on him. Sam couldn't see him anywhere. _Where is he?_ He thought, anxiety beginning to weigh on him.

He looked around himself, past darkened buildings, into pitch-black alleys, amongst white picket-fences and in the midst of hedges. Dean was nowhere. "Damn it Dean," he said softly, craning his head, holding fire for a moment to search for his brother.

It wasn't after a very long time that he saw Dean lying face-flat on the ground, seemingly unconscious. He was covered in greenish thick liquidy substance. Sam saw that his shotgun was at least a hundred meters away from his hand which was awkwardly position behind his back.

"Dean!" he yelled and ran towards him, giving hell to the group of monsters still on his track. He knelt down before him and shouted, "Dean, come on! Wake up, Dean…DEAN!"

Sam felt his pulse. It was beating, though rather meekly and he was still breathing, although there was a slim chance that he would wake up before the monster army would rip him into pieces. He was alone in this now. He and a few bullets made of rock-salt had to get through what seemed like at least twenty creatures and a chupaca-

 _Wait a minute!_ A queer thought hit him. _Where's the chupacabra-giant?_

And he would have found the answer had the host of monsters not closed in on him. In the course of yelling at Dean to wake up, the monster host had gotten enough time to pass the rest of the way unharmed. Moreover, a particularly brawly vampire was eyeing him with utmost loathing because, well, he had just shot it in the eye! With one deep crimson eye and one snow white eye locked on him, it was in the front of the monster-herd getting closer than ever now.

He hastily picked up his shotgun and banged it without even bothering to aim at anything. It hit a Daeva squarely in the chest and it fell on the ground with a crunch, but it was too little too late. Shooting one would help as much as a cane would to carve a Thanksgiving turkey. They were getting closer by the moment.

So he shot again. And again. And again. And again. But the number never seemed to decline. Instead, for every two monsters he shot, four came up to the front and continued charging. He knew that there was absolutely no way he would get out of this mayhem with his heart still intact. And Dean. There was a very good chance that he would never wake up from his sleep.

For all the good shooting did, he may as well have been _creating_ the monsters, because the more he shot, the more their number seemed to increase. Nevertheless, he didn't give up.

There were a few more _bangs_ and then sure enough, a changeling slapped the shotgun out of Sam's grasp. The gun flew into the air and landed over a hundred meters away with a clatter.

Seeing no other alternative, he inhaled deeply and punched the changeling right on its nose as hard as he could. There was a horrible _crack_ sound as his fist met its face.

For a moment he thought that it was the changelings face. Only after a second did he realize that it was his own hand that had fractured. Pain of unimaginable magnitude reeled through his body as he yelled in agony and staggered backward to gain composure.

Seizing the opportunity, a wendigo knocked him out of his legs. He fell head-first into the pitched road and he was flat on his back with a rout of monsters looking down on him. _This is it,_ he said to himself. _This is the end._

There was literally nothing he could do. He could barely even see the monsters because the pain was blinding him. Everything was blurry and he could hardly make out the shapes apparently hovering over him. Slowly but surely, he was slipping away. He saw a particularly large, bulbous shape astride him. When it raised its arm, ready to knock him dead, he saw a dazzling white light emanate from within its body. Then as the arm came down upon him, darkness engulfed him whole...


	3. Chapter 3: What Doesn't Kill You

_Chapter 3: What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Weaker_

* * *

It was as grubby as any motel room. A dust-covered filament lamp hung from the ceiling that threatened to fall down and smash to the ground any second. The original deep-red color of the walls was draped with an occasional blotch of yellow that looked suspiciously like vomit. The bed was unkempt and it was all but obvious that the bed-sheet desperately needed a change. On the far side of the room was a small wooden working desk that barely even held itself together. It was more of a coffee table than a working desk. The room reeked of rotten fish-guts but he reckoned he would survive it, at least for a couple of days. After that, he would have to find another filthy motel to stay in. If past was any indication, staying at one place for a long time held the risk of attracting unwanted attention and that was the last thing he needed right now. So he was constantly moving from town to town, city to city, motel to motel, every other week in the hope of staying under the Angel Radar.

Castiel was almost single-handedly responsible for the most disastrous event ever to strike Heaven. Of course, he hadn't meant to do it, the fox had him believing that it was all for a good cause, to _save_ Heaven. But reality was quite the opposite. Castiel was merely a tool, a jigsaw puzzle that happened to fit perfectly into Metatron's master-plan of locking down Heaven and making all the angels fall. And that was exactly what had happened. Every single angel in the Army of God walked the Earth now, and all of them had one thing and only one thing in mind – Castiel. They meant to hunt him down and kill him because in their eyes, it was him who left Heaven astray, not Metatron. And Castiel couldn't prove anything otherwise without bringing Metatron to the spotlight, which, at this point, seemed genuinely impossible because he was literally off the grid. So lately his life had been hopping from motel to motel, reading newspapers, searching the internet, at which he had gotten pretty good lately, looking for anything weird that might hint to Metatron's existence. And he was doing just that, sitting comfortably on the slightly disheveled and slightly stinking bed, glancing at newspaper articles.

As he was going through them, scanning each one and moving on to another, then another, then another, something strange happened. Suddenly the temperature of the room dropped ten degrees. A chill went through his spine. _Something's wrong._ He heard an eerie low howling noise, a sound that made him oddly uncomfortable.

And a split second later, the windows shattered and flew in along with a gust of wind so strong that it knocked him off his feet. Before he could see what had caused it, a dense white smoke filled the room that made him practically blind to whatever was happening around him. All of it happened so fast that he had no time to comprehend the mayhem.

Something reached for him through the smoke and grabbed him by the collar of his trench-coat, punched him several times squarely in his face, and flung him sideways with such power that the dry-wall crumbled under the impact of his body. He fell on the floor with a thud and he just laid there, on the brink of unconsciousness, waves of pain shooting through him of unexpected magnitudes.

He had been very weak as of late. A lot weaker than an angel ought to be owing to the Grace he had stolen a while back from another angel. Grace is what makes an angel an angel. Without it, an angel may as well be a human. It is small, impermanent, but very powerful. All the powers of an angel in its entirety, is stored in a Grace. However, it only works perfectly for its rightful owner. And since Castiel had stolen that particular Grace, for Metatron had used his Grace to make the angels fall, it was bound to leave some glitches in his powers, one of them being prone to attacks of lesser mortals like the ones he was facing now.

With his rightful Grace, whatever was trying to kill him wouldn't have stood a chance against him. Even so, an imperfect Grace was infinitely better than no Grace, especially now when all angels were trying to smite him.

The effort that his body demanded of him to stay out of comatose was enormous. But he was giving it his all not to fall into the abyss.

As he fought out of his trance, blood trickling down from the back of his head into the ground, something picked him up again. The initial shock of the blitzkrieg hadn't even set in, and he was already almost out cold, perhaps at the threshold of his ability of tolerate pain.

He waited for the deathly fling to come again, but it never did. Instead, he got the wind knocked out of him with a kick right in his gut. Pain shot through his body like lightning causing him to cringe abruptly and slip from his captor's grip. The ground hit him once again with a dull thump.

Sprawled awkwardly across the floor, his eyes half-open and his body writhing in pain, he tried to crawl back to his feet. Every muscle in his body screamed in protest. The tiniest of motions required an enormous effort on his side. It felt as though he had been run through a wood-chipper. After what seemed like ages, he got back to his knees and groped around desperately for any form of support.

His hands found something stable, the coffee-table, perhaps. He held on to it like a drowning man holds on to a piece of wood. Not able to stand on his feet, and not daring to fall back down, he stayed static, breathing heavily. _I can't give in now,_ he thought. _I have to bring Metatron to justice. I must save Heaven._

And with that thought in mind, he mustered every ounce of energy he could and got up unstably to his feet. He didn't know how long it would be before he would fall right back down because his legs were trembling so badly that he threatened to fall over any second now.

Then he realized that the smoke was slowly clearing out. Wisp by wisp, the dense white fog reduced to an obscure mist. His eyes were swollen though, thanks to the several face-punches before, and with his eyes half-closed, he was next to blind. But then again, something was better than nothing, even though that 'something' was patches of wobbly, unshapely colors.

The hands grabbed by his collar again. But it was different from the one that had grabbed him earlier. It was hard as a rock, and its icy coldness cut right through his trench coat and shirt. He couldn't see what the monster looked like exactly, but he saw before him a blot colored black and green mingled with each other in an awkward manner.

As it lifted him off his feet, he got his chance. He knew he didn't have much time, so he reached out before him blindly, and found his hand on something as hard and as cold as the hands grabbing him. _Its head,_ he thought, a tiny bit of satisfaction rising in him.

Then with all the power the borrowed Grace offered him, he tried to blow up its soul. It was the signature maneuver used by every angel to kill and never bring back. Without the soul, no beings could be brought back to life from death. It was the surest and cleanest way for any angel to slay its enemy. Though there were some creatures the angels couldn't kill, he was sure that it would work on his attacker.

He was wrong. His power worked on this creature as much as a honeybee sting would work on an elephant.

 _What is this monster?_ But before he could finish the thought he was flying through the air for the second time now. This time he didn't hit the wall; instead he flew out the window and fell on the slightly damp concrete patio just outside the motel.

As he tried to pick himself up, there was a deafening crack of the motel door being kicked open. He only had a few seconds before they would close in on him again.

 _The Blade,_ he remembered then. He slipped his Angel Blade from inside the cuff of his trench-coat to his right hand and lay there pretending to be out cold. This was his chance, possibly only chance, to turn it around.

He heard footsteps in numbers that suggested that there were at least four or five of them. It would be an enormous task to kill them all, but it was either kill them or get killed. So he just waited there, every heartbeat thumping against his chest as loud as a roar of a lion, his whole body pounding with pain so intense that he could barely hold himself to lay there motionless, and his brain going into overdrive, still chewing on the fact that something had burst into his room less than five minutes ago and had beaten the crap out of him.

His half-open-eyes still allowed him enough vision to target the creature accurately enough when the time would come to kill them. Several seconds passed in silence after which he heard the same low howling noise he'd heard just before the window had been smashed by the gust of wind. In fourteen billion years of living, he had never heard anything like it. Everything about the sound was queer. It made him want to crawl into a hole and stick his fingers up his ears.

 _Wait a minute,_ he thought. He knew that howl from somewhere. He couldn't quite put a finger on it, but he could've sworn he had heard–

His thought was interrupted by the icy cold hands that had gripped him the last time. He could see the same black and green colors blended absurdly hovering before him. _Now or never,_ he thought as pulled back his Blade-wielding arm and swung it in a perfect arc aiming squarely at the middle of the shape before him.

He buried the Blade at the dead center of the blob and pulled it out with a jerk. The wound that the Blade inflicted upon it gleamed from within its body. Its grip around his neck loosened considerably which bought him enough time to stand up and have a second go at the creature. But before he could begin to aim at the thing again, another hand smacked the back of his skull with a force that almost had him falling face-first into the concrete, but he pulled himself together at the last moment and ended up landing on all fours.

He stood up as fast as his injured body allowed him and grunted in pain that was swiveling throughout his body. As he turned back towards his attackers in the dark mess, he could vaguely see the one he'd just injured. Its body still gleamed as if it was a radioactive nuclear reactor. It was as good as dead, he knew. One wound from the Blade and all the wounded could wish for was a peaceful death except, of course, in some particularly rare cases when the creature was more powerful than an angel.

 _One down, half a dozen to go,_ he thought, looking around for the remainder of his attackers and failing, his eyes puffed up and useless as nipples on a breastplate.

He slipped another Blade from the other cuff of his trench-coat and held the two of them by their hilts, their points facing elbow-ward, and using the protected part of his triceps as a shield for protection from the blows of God knows how many monsters lurking around him.

No more than a heartbeat later he felt a light draft about his left that may well have been a breeze, but that was all he needed. Not wasting another moment he lashed out to his left, blindly swinging the Blades, hoping to dear God that he find something. And to his delight, his weapons buried deep into something squishy, something grotesque but something definitely alive. _Gotcha!_

A shrill scream of the creature filled his ears as he twisted both the Blades, kicked the creature as hard as he could, causing it to hurl backward and free the Blades from of its body. _Two down._

He hoped that this battle would end soon because the pain in his body was escalating every second. How much longer he could last in this horrific _three-or-four-on-one_ battle, he couldn't have said, but for an injured, blind half-angel with two pieces of steel against about a half dozen monsters, he was faring pretty well. Bringing Metatron to justice, helping the angels survive this mess called 'Earth' and saving Heaven felt like a lifetime ago. This seemed like a completely different world, a completely separate realm of existence into which he'd been shoved for no apparent reason.

For what seemed like years, he just stood there with the Blades as his protector, surrounded by the pitch darkness beyond, alert as a viper, ready to strike at anything that caused as slight a disturbance as a draft of air. He would need every inch of the minute amount of concentration and strength he had left in him if he hoped to survive this ordeal.

He heard a soft scuffling sound of feet on concrete behind him. Quick as a flash, he spun around and blindly whirled the Blades about him so that he wouldn't miss the creature that had made the noise.

Either the creature was too fast or he had misheard the scratching noise, but his Blades found nothing this time. _Damn it!_ He swung the Blade around for some time hoping for better luck but all was in vain. The creature had gotten beyond the range of his attack, and it was probably trying to provoke him. But he knew better than to recklessly launch forward and swing his blades around randomly.

So again, holding the Blades by their hilts and shielding his triceps with the steel, he moved to regain the iron clad position he was in before, when something landed on his shoulder-blades with an impact that almost crushed his shoulder-blades.

It was as if all the weighing blocks in the world, all the boulders, all the rock and the entire weight of the Earth had been dropped onto his shoulders. He felt an excruciating pain throughout his torso and he knew that it was just a matter of time before legs would give in. But he also knew that if he gave in now, there would be no coming back. So he held on for dear life. His legs were trembling with exhaustion and he had half a mind to collapse and take a break from all this mayhem, but that would have to wait.

So he didn't let the exhaustion get the better of him. He held on and with all the strength he had in him, and tried to move his hands. The weight wouldn't budge and neither would his hands.

 _What is this creature?_ He thought for the second time that night. He didn't know of any monster that killed the victims by placing weight on the victim's shoulders. _This night's been all kinds of crazy._

And as if he wasn't suffering enough, on top of the unbearable weight, he felt a sharp stab of pain on the back of his neck, so intense that it rendered him virtually paralyzed.

He screamed in agony as his legs gave out and he went down to his knees. He heard odd slurping noises from behind him. Whether it was a hallucination or not, he couldn't say, but what he could say was, with every _slurp_ , every last ounce of energy left in him drained out of him. _Is it sucking my_ blood _?_

And when he couldn't withstand the pain and exhaustion any longer, when he was on the verge of a blackout and ultimately death, he did what every angel did as a last resort. He was hoping that it wouldn't have to come to this, but there was no other foreseeable way out. This was his only chance to live.

And though it wasn't as powerful as it would have been if Castiel had his own Grace, it was enough for him to take control of the situation, at least for a while.

He reached into his soul, and amidst the darkness of nothingness he easily found the light. He glared into the stark white ball of light and willed it to wring itself out. All it took was a little bit of focus, and then obediently enough, it did.

A sudden warmth spread across his chest as every wound in his body healed itself in moments. Pretty soon the warmth turned to scalding hotness. And it felt as if his whole body was on fire. But he liked the warmth. It soothed his pain. It gave him hope, it gave him solace, it filled him with life. The enormous weight that was pulling him down vanished instantaneously as he _floated_ in mid-air. He couldn't have imagined a feeling more divine when two lustrous semi-transparent wings manifested themselves from his scapulae and deep-blue light emanated from his eyes.

And suddenly he could see everything around him, crystal clear. The first thing he noticed was that there were four weird-looking creatures gradually closing in around him, excluding the two dead ones. Killing the remaining three wouldn't be a problem. He was practically an atom bomb right now that could annihilate anything around him at his will, in a blink of an eye. The 'problem' would come later on, he knew.

But right now he was unbeatable; right now he was as powerful as an archangel. He let go of his blades which fell with a clatter on the concrete hovering beneath him, and spread his arms wide. By now, his whole body was glowing like the sun. Difficult as it was, he somehow fabricated two illuminating shapeless blobs of pure energy on his palms that he would use to kill the monsters below him.

He focused both the energy blobs on a monster that was particularly huge. It had a head like that of a gorilla with a few thorn-like projections jutting out from its face. The thorns made it seem all the more cold-blooded. It had huge crab-like hands and feet and what seemed to be rock-hard armor protecting its body. No matter how "rock-hard", Castiel knew that it would be as useful as a plastic shield against a Hydrogen Bomb.

 _The bigger they are, the harder they fall._ And he let go.

As soon as the bright white light touched it, it vaporized into thin air, just like that, huge as it was. Same was the fate of the remaining three monsters that perished the instant the ray of pure energy touched them.

He then restored into himself the energy blob, which was a small but an immensely powerful piece of his Grace. He let go of his wings and the deep blue illumination in his eyes. He landed on the ground lightly and leaned onto a wall as support lest he stumbled onto the ground. All the warmth that was within him was replaced by a chilly darkness.

It was done, it was all finally done. He had survived and all the monsters were dead! But he knew that his worries were far from over. Summoning that magnitude of power would render any angel terribly weak, let alone one with a stolen Grace and that weak to begin with.

He found the previous fatigue and exhaustion overwhelming him as all the pain returned to him in excruciating blows, wave after wave, more intense than they had been before. All his wounds were healed, but the pain was still there. And it was still unbearable. He almost regretted summoning his Grace's power to his rescue, but what other choice did he have? Between the choice of life or death, he was but a helpless little slave of life.

He had summoned the power only once before. It was when he had been threatening Crowley, the King of Hell to…he couldn't recall why. He knew that it had been for a terribly important reason, but he was blank on the details. His brain had been stripped of all its strength. Exasperation enveloped him as he lay down on the ground, helpless, physical and mental fatigue setting in. His vision was fading out too. His body wouldn't be able to hold himself conscious much longer, he realized. Even the last time when he had done it, he had been dreadfully weak after he'd been through it, but he'd had Sam and Dean's help then, and one day at a time, his strength had been finally restored.

 _Sam and Dean,_ he realized. _If they came for me, they must have come for Sam and Dean too._ He had to help them, but even if by some ridiculous chance he did go to help them, there wasn't much he could do. He was less than nothing without his powers as an angel.

Regardless, he marshaled whatever last trickle of energy he had left in him and disappeared into thin air.


	4. Chapter 4: Down and Out

_Chapter 4: Down and Out_

* * *

 _ **A Note on Chronology:**_ **Chapter 3 doesn't so much follow Chapter 2 as much as run parallel to it. While Sam and Dean were busy fighting the "Monster-Army", Castiel was busy dealing with the monsters. Both events happened at the same time.**

Dean Winchester woke with a start, a thousand miles away from the battle. His eyes flew open as soon as he regained consciousness, and he bolted upright while filling his screaming lungs with the sweet taste of air. It had been quite a while since his lungs had had the privilege, judging by the extent of desperation his body was exhibiting. His whole body felt like it was on fire. Every inch of him was throbbing in agony of magnitude he'd never experienced before, especially his chest. It felt as though he'd been stabbed in his chest a thousand times.

He heard a muffled yell of somebody that sounded suspiciously like " _Dean"._ But he was in too much pain to register, let alone respond to, the sound. All he knew was his chest was about to be ripped open by some blood-thirsty monster not too different from the ones he'd just battled and his body was about to be obliterated from within. He heard the sound again. _"Dean"._

 _Who is that?_

And that led him to think of what happened in the battlefield and wonder where he was. He wasn't dead, that was for sure…or was he?

The last thing he remembered was _flying_ and hearing something like "Rock salt works on…" and he was blank on everything after that.

It was only after a moment's thought he remembered going into the chupacabra-giant's mouth and almost getting "bitten" by him and falling off of what could have been a three-story building; the whole filthy, dangerous, but ultimately foolish ordeal. What on earth was he thinking?

After a fair amount of panting and wheezing, the pain in his chest finally subsided. And just when he thought the pain was all but over, he felt a burst of pain in his head as if a bomb had just exploded inside him. It was like someone had just opened a valve in his head and a dam-full of blood had gushed into his brain. All he could see around him were flashing black and white blobs. Was he blind?

He fell back into the bed, (was it a bed?) pain shooting through him, and allowed himself to take a few long, calm breaths to soothe the pain. It didn't do him much good.

He tried to cry for help, but only managed a faint whimper. He tried again, but it was barely a grunt. Unable to do anything about it, he clutched his throbbing head, hoping for the pain to recede. But with every _thud_ of his heart, came a wave of unimaginable pain that seemed virtually unstoppable.

He heard the yell again, although this time it was much clearer, and it was definitely a "Dean!" and it was definitely Sam.

"Sam?" he tried to let out, but ended up producing another desperate-sounding grumble. He felt someone touching him on his forehead. All that did was intensify the pain.

 _What the hell is Sam touching my forehead for?_ Just as he was about to push the hand away, the pain vanished, like it was never there. He could see everything around him, crystal clear! All the black and white blobs dissolved around him and he could slowly make out the details of his surroundings. All the pain and agony he had felt before seemed like just a bad memory. He felt absolutely normal, save for a few parts of his body that had probably suffered the worst during his fall.

"Dean, are you okay?" It was Sam, and his was voice flooded with relief.

"Yeah," he tried to say, but his voice got stuck in his throat.

He cleared his throat and said more clearly, "Yeah. How long was I out?"

"About half an hour," Sam said.

"Really? It felt like weeks," he said, rubbing his forehead.

"How is the pain?" said Castiel's voice.

"Cass?" Dean whirled around to see Castiel right behind him.

"He saved us," Sam answered the unasked question. "He did his angel-thingy, healed us and brought us back to the bunker."

He nodded, and then he noticed that he had never been in this room before. He didn't remember The Men of Letters' house or the "bunker" as they referred to it as, having a room like this.

"This is the bunker? The Men of Letters' house?" he asked, looking around the seemingly unfamiliar room, a tad too unfamiliar for a place he had been living for over a year.

"Yeah," Sam chuckled. "Turns out we hadn't even explored half of this place. This is some kind of a…a library I guess, I don't know how many of them this house has," Sam shrugged. "We went through all the Men of Letters' books and documents we had before, which didn't have any helpful info. So we roamed around the house, found this room and we found some books here, and we thought why not give it a go…"

"Find anything interesting?"

"Not yet," Sam said. "We checked all the rest of the Men of Letters' stuff, and I tried finding a lore that fits the profile, but we haven't found anything yet. I was just going through these books," he gestured towards a heap of books strewn across the floor.

"Well, we do have one theory," Castiel said warily, eyeing Sam from the corner of his eyes.

"No, Cass, for the gazillionth time Cass, it's not zombies!" Sam said in a frustrated voice.

Dean reflected on that for a moment. "Well it could be," Dean heard himself say. "Considering they were iced before their souls decided to jump back into their meatsuits to try and chomp on us."

"What? Seriously?" Sam said in disbelief. "You're actually buying this?"

"Give me a reason not to."

They're monsters for God's sakes, Dean," Sam said incredulously. "How can they be zombies if they're monsters? Plus, we've dealt with zombies before, remember? And do you remember them being anything like _this_?"

"Well, maybe they're evolved, in some way!" Dean said.

"What? Monster-zombies?"

"Yeah," Dean said, although now that he thought about it, he was the one who had disapproved of that theory in the first place. Sam was wont to point that out, and sure enough he did.

"So ghoul-ghost is stupid but monster-zombie isn't?"

"Maybe I was wrong, okay?" Dean admitted. "Look, obviously this case has more to it than meets the eye, but right now it's all we've got."

"Maybe this is something completely different," Sam said. "Maybe it's something we've never seen."

"It's _obviously_ something we've never seen," Dean said, trying to talk sense into the stubborn-headed little child Sam was. "But right now, that's the only lead we have. Unless you have a better idea."

Sam considered this for a moment. "Okay, how about Skin-changers? Or Shapeshifters? Or Revenants? And isn't it possible they changed themselves into the ghouls we had killed, and all other monsters there were Skin-changers as well?"

"And since when does rock-salt affect Skin-changers but silver bullets don't?"

"And zombies?" Sam shot back. "Salt affects zombies?"

"It's possible actually," Castiel broke in, and he sounded almost guilty. "According to the Haitian legend, each type of legendary zombie has one half of its spirit missing."

That would explain the working of rock-salts against them, Dean realized. Rock-salt is normally used as a deterrent against spirits, mostly vengeful spirits since they are the most violent ones. They had used it countless times when dealing with ghosts, and though it doesn't destroy the spirit, it acts as a very efficient way to make the ghost disappear, at least for some time. The only way to destroy a spirit would be to salt and burn the body, but nevertheless, salt was an invaluable weapon whenever it came to dealing with anything related to spirits.

And in this case, the zombies have, apparently, a piece of their spirit clinging to themselves, and that is why rock-salt works against them.

Sam raised his eyebrows. "And you know this how?"

"I just read it, in that book," Castiel said, pointing to a particularly bulky and leathery book.

Sam stared at him disbelievingly. "And you didn't think to tell me that before?"

"I didn't think it would be that big a deal."

"Well, it is!" Sam said incredulously.

"Hey," Dean snapped, standing up and wincing in pain. "Stop this old-couple-whining and let's get down to business, okay? First of all, do we all agree that it's a zombie-case?"

"Seems as good a starting point as any," Sam shrugged.

"Good enough," he said. "Research?"

"Research," Castiel echoed.

Dean picked up a book and sat back down on the bed he was sleeping minutes ago and began flipping through the pages. _Monster-zombies,_ he mused. _What could The Men of Letters possibly have on monster-zombies?_ Although it was almost a given that The Men of Letters knew more about the supernatural world than hunters such as themselves on nearly every front, monster-zombies seemed far-fetched even for The Men of Letters.

Something occurred to him then, something that should've occurred to him a long time ago.

"Cass? Aren't you on borrowed Grace?" Dean asked carefully.

"Yes." Castiel replied, not taking his eyes off of the book he was holding, though feeling a tad more uncomfortable.

"And Sam said that you did your angel-thingy, killed all the monsters, healed us and brought us back to the bunker. Is that true?" Dean asked, measuring every word.

"Yes."

"Can you even do that?"

"Yes, of course I can. I'm an angel." Dean could see it in his eyes that he was trying to overcompensate. A feeling of dread filled him as he realized the possible truth of what was actually going on.

"You're on borrowed Grace. You're already weak as you are. How did you kill all the monsters around us? How did you teleport us to the bunker, healed me, and healed Dean just now?" Sam asked, slowly becoming aware of the true nature of the problem that they were facing.

"I…" there was a long pause. "Had to make a sacrifice."

"What sacrifice?"

There was a long spell of silence again which neither Dean nor Sam broke. They simply waited for Castiel to speak. His answer could well decide if they could figure out whatever it was that they were dealing with and eventually kill it, or them.

"I had to use a part of my Grace," Castiel said, his face revealing nothing, his eyes fixated on the book he was holding.

Sam raised his eyebrows. "You had to use a part of your Grace? Does that mean you're even weaker than you were before?"

"No."

"Well what does it mean then?" Dean asked impatiently, hoping against hope.

"It means," Castiel said, his expression austere. He finally looking up from the book and penetrating Dean with his deep-blue eyes with such intensity that it was all Dean could do not to flinch. "That I am a human."


	5. Chapter 5: Break of Dawn

_Chapter 5: Break of Dawn_

* * *

 _Castiel is a human._ A chill ran through Sam's spine.

"You lost all your angelic powers?" Sam asked.

"Whatever fickle of Grace was in me got consumed when I healed Dean,"Castiel said.

The repercussions of this were massive, especially when they were fighting something they had no clue about. Their odds of stopping this apparent "Zombie Apocalypse" just dropped drastically. If Castiel had been an angel, this job would have had the potential of being a lot easier. Not because Castiel could have snapped his fingers and whatever they were dealing with would die, the hard part was always equally hard. But because if there was one thing that experience had taught them, it was that to kill something as powerful as this, they would require ingredients, and spells of exceeding unorthodoxy, some of them very rare, which could take them weeks or months to obtain. For instance, a year back, when they had needed "The Demon Bomb", substances such as West Bank witch hazel, skull of Egyptian calf, the tail of "some random-ass newt that may or may not be extinct", as Kevin had put it so eloquently, had been very easy to obtain just because Castiel could go into any corner of the world instantaneously. Now they didn't have that option.

"Didn't you always use to say that you'd die if you didn't get a Grace quickly?" Sam asked.

"Turns out I don't," Castiel said. "I'd been feeling quite weak and I just assumed that I would keep getting weaker and weaker until I died if I didn't replenish my Grace soon enough."

"Are you weak now?"

"Very," he admitted. "But this is different. This is…something I've never experienced. And I've still got Bartholomew and Malachi to think about, not to mention Metatron."

"Whoa, whoa, easy there tiger, one day at a time," Dean said, patting Castiel's shoulders. "We'll figure it out, whatever is the deal with your Grace, okay? Right now, let's figure out what the hell we're dealing with here. Unless you're too weak to work, and you wanna take a walk on this one."

"No," Castiel said as firmly as he could. "I want to help with the case."

They had barely made any progress at all on that front. Before Dean had woken up, Castiel and Sam had spent most of the time theorizing about what it could be that they were dealing with and how Castiel had been attacked and how he'd come to their rescue in the nick of time.

So they got back to digging. Sam was still somewhat skeptical about the whole "monster-zombie" theory but it was the only lead they had. So here they were, burying themselves in books, desperate to find something that linked zombie-lore with…well, everything else.

But the only thing that he had been able to find so far had been just some basic stuff about zombies. Nothing that even remotely suggested its extension to anything other than humans had come up in any of the lore that he had gone through. All he had managed to find so far in the books and on the internet were the things they already knew from before, when they had hunted down a zombie.

They had faced zombies more than once in their hunting career. The first one was about eight years ago when a girl named Angela Mason was brought back from the dead by a friend through a Greek ritual, then there was the time when Death himself raised people back from the dead, courtesy of Lucifer, and the worst one was when the Leviathans walked the Earth, free as birds and they changed people into zombies. But never in his life had he ever heard of a zombie that wasn't a person, but a monster. This was a whole new level of Zombiism.

And as he looked through the book, it seemed even the mighty Men of Letters had virtually nothing on monster-zombie-fun-facts.

An hour passed. Then another. Then another. It was almost five in the morning and they were as baffled about this case as they were three hours ago. They were just continuously flipping through books gathering information about zombies which were as useless as nipples on a breastplate.

Finally it was too much for Sam. They had been looking for three hours and they still had no idea what they were looking for. He broke the silence.

"Got anything?"

"Nada," Dean said, flinging a particularly bulky book across the room and picking up another one. "I mean some bits and pieces, but nothing too important. You?"

"Nothing," Sam replied. "Cass?"

He shook his head.

Castiel's weakness was beginning to show. Three hours ago he had seemed perfectly fine save for some expected signs of weakness, but now he seemed a lot worse. His eyes were droopy, and it seemed as though all blood had been drained from his face. He was having a hard time keeping his eyes open, let alone going through the books and extracting useful information from them.

"Cass, maybe you should take a rest. Don't stress yourself too much," Sam said. "Dean and I can handle this."

"No." It was barely a whisper. "No," he said more clearly. "I want to help you."

"You're more of a burden than a help right now," Dean said. "Have you looked in the mirror?"

"I'm fine," Castiel managed.

Dean frowned. "You're not!"

"I am!" he said quietly.

Looking at Dean's expression, for a second it looked as though Dean would punch Castiel and knock him out right then and there.

"Fine," he said after a while in his most quiet pissed off voice. "Suit yourself, princess."

Nobody said anything for a very long uncomfortable moment.

"Look," Sam said, changing the topic abruptly. "There's no way we're going to figure this thing out like this. We've been here for almost the entire night, and where have we gotten? We don't know a single thing about what it is we're hunting."

"Do you have a better idea?" Dean said flipping through a small but what seemed like an extremely old book.

"Well, let's start by taking stock of what we know now, let's discuss what we've dug up till now, and then we can mix and match our own theories, see which ones fit the best. Maybe then we can have a more solid picture of what we're hunting," Sam said. _Or in this case, what's hunting us,_ which he left unsaid.

"Okay," Dean said. "Sounds good."

"So first of all we know that the earliest zombie-lore traces back to Haitian folklore," Sam figured it would be best to start from the basics. "Zombies reflect soul dualism, also a belief of Haitian Voodoo. So each type of legendary zombie is therefore missing one half of its soul, therefore the working of salt. What else do we know so far?"

"Well, there is this weird-ass lore about zombies, I don't know how much of it is correct but according to 'Zumbi: The Haitian Legend'," Dean said holding up the small sky-blue hard-covered book that he'd been holding. "It was thought that the Voodoo deity Baron Samedi would gather – "

"Baron what?"

"Samedi. Apparently this guy is one of the Loa of Haitian Voodoo. _Loa_ basically means a spirit." Dean said as he flipped through the pages as if searching for something. "Ah, here! Samedi is a Loa of the dead, along with Baron's numerous other incarnations, Baron Cimetière, Baron La Croix, and Baron Kriminel."

"So Baron Samedi is the Angel of Death?"

"Not exactly," Dean said, reading out from the book. "They are the intermediates between God and humanity. Unlike angels, they are not prayed to; and unlike angels they have their own personal likes and dislikes, sacred songs, dances and ritual symbols."

"So kind of like a demi-god."

"Sort of, yeah." Dean said. "Anyway, so as I was saying, it was thought that the Voodoo deity Baron Samedi would gather _enslaved Africans_ from their grave to bring them to a heavenly afterlife in Africa, unless they had offended him in some way, in which case they would be forever a slave after death, as a zombie. A zombie's whole soul can be restored if Baron Samedi desires to do so."

Sam raised his eyebrows. "Enslaved Africans?"

"I know. Sounds weird!" Dean said.

"If something is behind this resurrection, it has to be something more powerful than Baron Samedi, wouldn't it?"

"I'm certain that someone incredibly powerful is behind this resurrection, a lot more powerful than this demi-god, because it is one thing to resurrect a human, which in itself requires an unimaginable amount of power, and a whole different story to bring a monster back from the dead." Castiel said. He was trying hard to mask his exhaustion, to keep his voice from quavering, and failing miserably at it. "I actually found something about that," he fumbled around for something and grabbed a gigantic book titled "Art of Necromancy", which he dropped twice while trying to lift it. Finally Sam had to help him with it.

"The creatures, or rather sorcerers that create zombies are called 'bokors'," Castiel said as he flipped open the book and searched for it. "Here it is. Voodoo folklore says that Bokors, Voodoo priests that were concerned with the study and application of black magic, had the ability to resurrect the deceased through _coup padre_ which is a powder that is given orally to the dead body, the primary ingredient of which is tetrodoxin. The other ingredients of _coup padre_ have been kept secret by the bokor society of Haiti. Zombies remain under the control of the bokor as their personal slaves, since they have no will of their own. And then it goes into the gritty details of the ritual that bokors perform to make zombies out of bodies."

"Okay," said Dean. "So this Baron Samedi-equivalent of ours is also a bokor. And what does it say about what happens if the bokor is dead? Will the zombies go shish kebab again?"

Castiel shook his head. "I don't think so. It is written that they remain under the Bokor's power until the Bokor dies."

"So they'll live, but they'll have no purpose. They'll be free. Just mindless drones roaming the Earth," Dean said. Sam was not sure if he should feel relieved or worried.

"Not mindless, no," Castiel said, not taking his eyes off the book, and reading it out. "It is believed that if the zombie vessel is somehow broken, or if the offending bokor dies, then they will regain some free will and will regain a sense of their original being."

"That means they'll be monsters again," Sam said with a sinking feeling in his stomach. "And every monster there had been raised from the dead. If we kill this bokor, they'll all be back, God knows how many."

Dean shook his head. "We're not doing that. There has to be another way. A way that will get rid of the bokor and everything he's created."

"We'll think about that later. That is not too big a price to pay considering this thing can whip out any number of monsters at any given time. First let's figure out who or what is doing this, and try to finish it," Sam said.

"Well we know he's very powerful, more powerful than Baron Samedi who can only bring back people, perhaps even more powerful than an angel, and definitely not a human," Castiel said. "Also there has to be a purpose for the resurrection, some motive."

"This can't be his hobby," he continued. "And according to the book that Dean was reading, 'Zumbi: The Haitian Legend', the one who creates zombies control them for however long he wants to and most of them use zombies for manual slave labor. And in 'Art of Necromancy', it has been said that zombies remain under the control of the bokor as their personal slaves, since they have no will of their own."

"So this bokor created all these zombies because he wanted them to do something for him, he wanted them to run an errand for him," Dean said, thinking out loud.

"The question is what is it?"

"Well if this 'errand' needs this many zombies then maybe it's pretty huge. What was it, over twenty monsters just in that part of Michigan? Who knows how many he's got around the world?" Castiel said grimly.

Nobody spoke for a long time. They let the fact that they might have to fight a globe-full of monsters they had worked for decades killing one at a time all at once sink in.

"Wait," Dean said, abruptly breaking the silence. "Haven't we have faced this before? Mass resurrection, rituals to bring back people from the dead, spells to bring back ghosts. Ring a bell?"

Sam reflected on that for a moment. Had they faced this before? And then it hit him.

"Samhain? You think this is Samhain?" Sam said, horrified. Even saying his name made the hairs on the back of his neck stand.

"It's likely," Dean said. "I don't wanna believe it any more than you do, but he fits the profile, doesn't he?"

About six years ago they had come across the Celtic God of Death Samhain, who had resurrected hundreds of people from their graves, hundreds of ghouls, had brought back ghosts through the veil of life, and they'd had a spectacularly hard time killing Samhain and stopping what then seemed like the Zombie Apocalypse. It had been one of the toughest jobs he'd ever worked. Could it be? Was he back? After all that he and Dean had done to send him back to hell, had he broken out again?

"The one who the Celts worship, that Samhain?" Castiel asked indignantly.

Sam and Dean shared a surprised look. After all, it had been before they had met Castiel.

"How did you know?" Dean asked.

"He was expelled from Heaven," Castiel said glumly. "On account of practicing necromancy. He used to be the Arch Reaper."

"Arch Reaper?"

"That means he used to work directly under Death."

"So he snapped someone back to life who was supposed to be dead? And that got him chucked to hell?" Dean asked.

Castiel nodded. "But that's not important because this is not him. He doesn't have that kind magnitude of power," Castiel replied. "He can only bring people, at most ghouls back. Not a monster-army!"

"Also," he added. "He can only be broken out of hell through three human sacrifices over three days, and the last day must occur on the final day of Celtic harvest. Not to mention, this ritual can only be attempted every six-hundred years."

"Someone might have broken him out some other way then," Sam shrugged. It wasn't uncommon for some rules to have bent, especially in cases as inscrutable and vastly different from others as this.

"The spell that binds him to hell has been created by Death himself," Castiel explained. "No one, no matter how strong can ever bring Samhain out of hell, except in the narrow window of opportunity that has long since passed and the next yet to arrive for the next six centuries."

"Okay, so this is not him," Dean conceded. "This is something even more powerful than the friggin' _Arch Reaper!_ "

"Good times." Sam said glumly.

"Besides," Castiel changed the subject. "If we do manage to kill this bokor, whoever that is, how will we kill all the zombies he has created?"

" _We_ ," Dean said, standing up and pacing the room. "Are not going to do anything. You look like a cow with a baton shoved up your ass. You're gonna take some rest, and Sam and I will figure this out."

This time Castiel didn't object. Instead he said, "I will help with the lore. That's the least I can do. "

Dean still wasn't okay with it, Sam could tell, and rightfully so. Castiel did look like a cow with a baton shoved up his ass. For a second, it looked as though Dean was about to protest, but it seemed he thought the better of it.

"Fine," he said shortly.

They had gone through all the lore there was on zombies and everything the Men of Letters had on them. Still there was nothing concrete deducible from the haystack of useless information they had pooled. They were still utterly clueless. There had been some cases in their life as hunters that had left them stumped, but this was another level altogether. They may well have been hamsters running on a wheel and chasing the nut they would never get to.

Nobody spoke for a long time. Yet Sam could read both of their thoughts and he wouldn't be wrong in saying that they could read his. Dean was still pacing the room, perhaps thinking about their next move, and the bokor's next move. He was thinking about how to deal with the consequences if they were ever successful in killing the bokor. He was undoubtedly worried about Castiel, as Sam was; he could see it on his face.

Then he looked over to Castiel, who looked as if he would collapse any second. How he could possibly "help them with the lore", as he had claimed, he didn't know. His face was getting paler by the minute, and he was getting weaker by the second, and as hard as he was trying to, he couldn't hide it. He was still flipping through the pages of "Art of Necromancy", his hands almost shaking, desperate to find something that would help them figure out the mess they were in.

He was truly worried about Castiel. His Grace was exhausted and he was stressing himself to a point that Sam was afraid he would break. And that was about the last thing they needed. Castiel was one of the few glimmers of hope left who had the potential to get them through all of this. After all, he did know more lore than any mortal man alive; and seeing as all the documents and all the bulky books were not helping them all that much, they would need every helping hand and insightful mind that they could get.

And Castiel was probably on the top of the list on that front.

It took him a moment, but it occurred to him. _Every helping hand and insightful mind that they could get._

Epiphany struck.

The spell of silence was interrupted by Sam's outcry, "What if we called other hunters?"

Dean stopped in his tracks and Castiel abruptly took his eyes off the book and both of them looked at him with questioning looks on their faces, as if asking, _you want to drag them with us into this?_

He decided to answer the unasked question, and continued, almost pleadingly, "We're going to need all the help we can possibly get to get through his. If that son of a bitch can call up allies to help him do whatever he's doing, so can we. Clearly we need more than two men and a broken angel to kill this thing. Hell, we could barely handle, what, one thousandth of his army back there. Can you imagine what it'll be like when it finds out we're trying to find a way to kill it? How many monsters do you think it will deploy on us? We'll be lucky if we survive the next twenty four hours without all the hunters backing us up, and us backing them up. And what will we do if by some miracle we manage to gank the bastard? Can we face the entirety of his army, all on our own? We're gonna need everything we've got to get through with this."

He paused for a moment. "This is our best bet, maybe our only bet. This is the only way we'll have the remotest chance of surviving this hunt."

There was another long pause. Dean considered it, all the while looking at Sam, his brain working frantically, after which he replied, "We'd better hit the ground running then, wouldn't you say?"

That was about as modest as Dean would get.

 _They've got their army,_ Sam thought to himself, almost smiling. _We've got ours._


	6. Chapter 6: A Year-long Break

_Chapter 6: A Year-long Break_

* * *

Saving Sam and Dean from that miasma of chaos had really taken its toll on Castiel. Dead he may not be, but he was very weak.

He still couldn't believe he had managed to save Sam and Dean from what was the biggest mickle of monsters, both in number and type, he had ever had the misfortune to encounter, and still make it out alive himself. To be fair though, it had taken a good deal of his angel powers to do it. So much so that his Grace was exhausted, and for the second time in his life he would have to live a _human life_ , the first of course being when Metatron had stolen his Grace.

He had always assumed that if he didn't replenish his borrowed Grace, he would die. It was, after all, the logical assumption. The more he used the Grace, the weaker he became. He simply supposed that at the end of the road would be death.

Clearly, he had been wrong. It was unlike anything he'd ever felt. He was physically exhausted, as if he had just run three hundred miles, even though all he had done in the past three hours was go through some books. Fatigue blanketed his body like a swarm of flies on a carcass. Every inch of his body was screaming for sleep, or at least some rest. It would be so much easier to just let go and slip into oblivion, but he had a job to do. And an important one at that. So the least he could do was help them with the lore. It wasn't as if his consciousness threatened to give out, though it was how he felt before when he still retained a small part of his Grace. Losing his entire angelic powers was different from losing a part of it. While in the latter case he got weaker the bleaker his Grace became, losing all of it was like a sudden jump from fatally weak to human. From Sam and Dean's reaction, it seemed he looked far worse than he actually felt.

Having said that, he was still tired and he could use some rest. Even after almost a very long experience as a human a year ago, he still wasn't used to being human.

Being able to taste, to smell, to be affected by petty human desires and emotions bothered him. It had almost gotten him killed the last time. Being an angel is a lot simpler. You can be cold, almost unemotional and merciless. You can be strong. You can be absolute. Humans are weak, faint-hearted. They are far too easily affected by sentiment and there is far too much going on in their heads. That is a massive liability. Having no Grace brought with it that weakness, besides the obvious absence of angelic powers. He couldn't fathom how Sam and Dean handled that mess.

There was a hollow pit inside him, he could feel that. Almost like a ball of pure darkness that nothing could fill. Before, when he'd had his Grace intact, reaching into his soul he would find within himself a fiery pulsating ball of blindingly white light, his essence, the very element that made him what he was, his Grace. Now it was replaced by an obscure mist of pure blackness.

Perhaps it was angelic adrenaline or something of the sort, because there was no other way he could explain it. Those few minutes of saving Sam and Dean from the vortex of chaos had probably been the most intense minutes of his life. And for an angel who had been on the brink of unconsciousness just seconds ago, he was able to finish a horde of monsters, including a giant that looked like it hell's worst creation, and still get out alive.

He remembered the whole incident vividly. As soon as he rematerialized in Detroit, mid-battle, more like mid-ambush, the first thing he saw was the giant. That ugly, disgusting giant. Even though he was hundreds of meters away from it, its enormity was evident. It was almost twenty feet in length, and at least six feet wide. A number of horn-like projections jutted out along the length of its spine. Its head was like that of a wolf, except it was covered in greenish scales. Its eyes were deep-red, and when it opened its mouth, he could see its red vicious teeth in all its glory, or rather, in all its grotesqueness.

Something then fell out of his mouth which took him but a heartbeat to realize that it was Dean. But it was too late to the break the fall. He saw Dean fall with a thud onto the ground, his shotgun flailing the opposite direction. Before Castiel could do anything, with a screech that shook the ground from within, the giant started hurtling towards Dean, surely with the intention of trampling him under its feet that were at least the size of Dean's car.

The adrenaline took over. He didn't waste a moment. He reached inside him for the light, which seemed rather dim now but he would worry about that later. He levitated in mid-air and two livid semi-transparent wings had manifested themselves from his scapulae, his eyes deep-blue. He wrung it out and directed the ray of pure energy towards the giant which vaporized like it was a block of naphthalene tossed into a furnace.

Sam, however, didn't seem to notice anything happening behind his back. He was yelling something about rock-salt working on them and was shooting away as many monsters as he could. Seeing the number of monsters intent on hunting Sam, it was clear that he wouldn't survive long if Castiel didn't intervene.

But he was too weak to go on. He restored his Grace in himself and landed on the pitched road, barely conscious. He saw that Sam, for some reason, had stopped shooting now and was looking around. Castiel realized he was looking for Dean.

He didn't seem to notice Castiel, a lone figure hundreds of meters away. It took him a good half-a-minute to find his brother face down on the ground, knocked out cold. And as soon as he saw it, he ran straight to Dean, perhaps to see if he was alive. It was almost as if he had completely forgotten about the horde of monsters on his tail.

And sure enough, they closed in on him.

It was too late by the time Sam realized that though. He quickly raised the gun and shot some of them, but it didn't do him much good. They were too close, and he was overwhelmingly outnumbered. One of them knocked the gun out of his hand.

Castiel ran towards the amassed crowd as fast as his broken body would allow him, which was as fast as an injured turtle. They were still at least a hundred meters away. He would never get there in time to save Sam, and even if he did get there, there wasn't much he could do. He'd almost died defending himself against half a dozen monsters with his Blade and there was at least thrice that number here. Not to mention, he was a lot weaker than he had been when he was in the motel. _This isn't going to work._

As much as he hated it, he knew he had no other choice.

For the third time that day, he sucked in a deep breath, closed his eyes, and almost regretfully reached for the light, which was alarmingly dim now, but regardless squeezed it out of his soul and hurled _all_ of it at the swarm of abominations before him.

It seemed to him like the entire city of Detroit was bathed in the blinding light of his Grace as it swallowed the whole gang of monsters in its stark whiteness.

All monsters turned into dust in an instant. The surrounding returned to its murky dull color of midnight as his Grace left no evidence save for a pile of dust, that there were over half a hundred monsters rioting along with a giant from the seventh ring of hell just seconds ago. Everything was back to normal.

He saw that Sam was unconscious. A monster must have knocked him out cold. Dean was just beside his brother in what seemed like a very uncomfortable position to land from a height of twenty feet. He felt very relieved when he noticed his breathing, albeit very frail. He was lucky to be alive. It seemed like his bones would need some mending. He had probably broken a couple of ribs and surely, by the looks of it, all four of his limbs.

Tired as he was, he couldn't waste much time. For all he knew another wave of monsters were on their tail trying to track them down. He hadn't the slightest clue why the three of them were on this army's hit list. There would be plenty of time to think about that once they got out of this godforsaken place. And he was confident they could beat it with Sam and Dean beside him.

Without wasting another moment, he grabbed Sam and Dean and with all his might teleported them a thousand miles across the country to Lebanon, Kansas, to the safest place ever created in human history, to the Men of Letters bunker.

"Hello?" Dean spoke into his phone, jolting him back to reality.

Even though after five hours of research they still didn't have any clue as to what was behind all of this and why he deployed those abominations on them, whatever this monster mastermind was, they weren't going down without a fight.


End file.
